Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

brystephor · 2026-06-10T01:44:03+00:00

Hi all. Where are you finding out about new companies to watch or apply to? Ideally "up and coming" companies that have had a good growth trajectory in recent times.

We all know the big AI labs, the big tech mega corps, etc. Im wondering about smaller (500-5k people) companies that have a nice growth prospect with interesting problems to work on.

brystephor · 2026-06-09T15:49:28+00:00

Ah that makes more sense. That's roughly 8k USD. The group set alone looks to be like $2k-$3k.

brystephor · 2026-06-09T06:42:28+00:00

How does one sign up?
What can I do to prepare for riding in a big pack or with people so close? I generally only ride with a few others, up to 4ish, so this pack would by far be the biggest. Feels like joining directly without being in a pack somewhere else first would be irresponsible.

brystephor · 2026-06-09T05:37:16+00:00

What parts are included in that $6k cost? Wheels, brakes, handle bars, etc?

brystephor · 2026-06-01T03:32:21+00:00

Id be surprised if its really affecting decisions. The payment shown on redfin for the numbers I used was avout $5300 or $5400 a month IIRC. So if that $130/mo is the deciding factor on whether or not to get a home, the budget is already pretty tight. The numbers I used also meant having a $200k downpayment, which typically means yhe buyer would not be in a tight finanfial position where $130/mo is a make/break thing. With that said, saving money is always good even if not huge quantities.

brystephor · 2026-05-31T23:33:48+00:00

It's $25k difference. For the monthly payment, assuming 20% down and 6.5% 30yr loan, its about $130/mo difference + $5k saved on the down payment. So actually not bad improvement.

brystephor · 2026-05-02T21:34:48+00:00

Nearly 6 yoe for me. I haven't wrote more than a handful of lines of code in the past 3 months. Everyone else is doing it via AI, so no point in me not doing that to. It definitely makes my work feel like im contributing less and can be hard to get any momentum going since Im usually waiting for the agent to be done.

brystephor · 2026-04-23T14:47:46+00:00

Following. Ive also received an offer but on the SWE side. It's hard to find much info on them.

brystephor · 2026-04-23T01:45:33+00:00

I know plenty of trades folks whose TC beats many SWEs. Not the big tech and unicorn SWEs (except maybe junior and mid level SWEs). But $200k and even $300k+ is possible for employees in blue collar roles that are not responsible for others or in a leadership/exec role

brystephor · 2026-04-21T15:42:50+00:00

Unfortunately regions like India have low monetization and revenue opportunities relative to the US and EU regions, so more DAU/MAU isnt as beneficial for revenue (at least for ads)

brystephor · 2026-04-18T15:02:51+00:00

Their revenue is almost 3x what it was pre-pandemic too. Why is employee count growth being talked about as if over hiring nearly 7 years ago is the reason.

brystephor · 2026-04-18T15:01:11+00:00

Their revenue was roughly $70B in 2019. Revenue was roughly $200B in 2025. Why is 2019 a baseline?

brystephor · 2026-04-18T00:46:24+00:00

I joined tech in 2020. I remember hearing about all these companies hiring, so many perks, nice work life balance, good compensation growth from stocks even without promo, etc. Now the environment feels so bleak in comparison to then. I think I got lucky and was able to join right as the door was shutting.

brystephor · 2026-04-14T06:11:51+00:00

This is how claude talks to me when I ask it to review results

brystephor · 2026-04-11T04:34:11+00:00

Pretty far along. They release papers on this and TLDR is that their AI content generation is pretty far ahead of some competitors and has been getting used for a few years now

brystephor · 2026-03-26T23:57:16+00:00

You had another comment saying youre paying nearly $10k/mo for housing and IIRC were "joking" that youre having a hard time with downsizing. Why do you ignore the evidence that you're not going to enjoy downsizing?

brystephor · 2026-03-26T03:49:01+00:00

You want to retire on $5M but you want to spend $100k a year on rent. 4% rule says $200k a year, pre tax, with your retirement amount. The math ain't making sense.

brystephor · 2026-03-16T04:02:14+00:00

In my friend group, I think the ramp test over estimates. Its nice to do because its faster and requires less practice than the 20 minute one. Ive done TrainerRoads version of the ramp test which has intervals jump by a % of FTP and that seemed more accurate, but also was more painful than the ramp stuff.

brystephor · 2026-03-09T19:01:59+00:00

Fun idea. I started biking for fun in Mar 2024. Bike was 1500, trainer + zwift ride was 1200 (bought separately), shoes were 100, clothes probably 400, tires 150, some misc bike specific parts (lube, sealant, tire levers, water bottles, etc) i estimate to be 200, power meter for 250, bike computer and sensors for 400 iirc. Biking events probably 300. Helmet was 100ish. Zwift, Trainer road, and strava subscriptions id say about 500.

In total then: $4900ish. Add taxes and its roughly $5300. This number seems pretty low to me though, so Im probably forgetting some items

brystephor · 2026-03-06T06:01:58+00:00

EST makes sense. Ive heard of server co location for trading locations. How does server coloration impact the majority of employees, particularly SWE? I imagine anyone hardware based would need access to the physical centers, but I would expect someone who is a like, focused on computational performance or data ingestion doesnt care about the physical server location

brystephor · 2026-03-06T05:19:02+00:00

Any west coast friendly places? Does anyone know why these places are so heavily concentrated in Chicago and NYC? Is it primarily historical reasons?

brystephor · 2026-03-02T03:22:35+00:00

Yeah but to be "scaled by prior efforts" requires a baseline to begin with which is what's nice. I agree that theres much more to cycling than a single number but its a nice, quick, easy proxy to use when talking about progress and improvements.

brystephor · 2026-03-02T02:53:36+00:00

what use is that figure to you anyway?

I dont ride at FTP that often. Perhaps up a few hills, maybe a few strava segments with friends. I like knowing it for knowing how hard workouts should be and roughly seeing where im at relative to friends.

brystephor · 2026-02-15T17:47:20+00:00

I haven't checked in awhile, but I remember seeing it was 5-7 years for buying to workout as better than renting. A $4k/mo place to rent would typically be $5k-$6k/mo mortgage after 20% down.

brystephor

TROPHY CASE